Understanding Economic Disparities

If we treated this like any other economic shock, we’d call it what it is: a structural failure. In my latest Fortune byline, I break down why the U.S. labor market is diverging along lines of race, gender, and pay: 🔹 Black women down 297,000 jobs since February 🔹 Men up +621,000 jobs 🔹 673,000 women still missing from the workforce since the pandemic 🔹 Job growth concentrated in the lowest-paying sectors for women 🔹 Pay gaps widening (again) This is not happening by accident. It’s happening by design. When the most educated female cohort in the country is pushed out of stable, high-wage sectors, and concentrated in the lowest-paying ones, that is a policy choice. When we continue to count only who is in the labor market, and ignore who has been pushed out, that is a modeling failure. And when we treat women’s economic participation as optional rather than foundational, that is a national risk. The Exit Economy is what emerges when exclusion becomes the operating system. It doesn’t just cost women. It costs the entire country. #GenderEconomist #LaborMarket #EconomicEquity #WomenAndTheEconomy #BlackWomenAtWork #IntersectionalEconomics #JobsReport #EconomicData #FutureOfWork #EquityAsEconomicStrategy Nick Lichtenberg Emma Hinchliffe Jessica Sibley AJ Hess Ray Vanessa Mobley Rachel Wolfe

🥊 “Jingjin, have you ever considered that women are just inferior to men?” That was her opening line. The lady who challenged me was not a traditionalist in pearls. She was one of the top investment bankers of her time, closed billion-dollar deals, led global teams, the kind of woman whose voice dropped ten degrees when money was on the line. And she meant it. “Back in my day, if I had to hire, I’d always go for the man. No pregnancy leave. No PMS. No emotional volatility. Just less… liability.” And she doesn’t believe in what I do. Helping women lead from a place of wholeness. Because to her, wholeness is a luxury. Winning requires neutrality. And neutrality means: be less female and suck it up! I’ve heard versions of this many times, and too often, from high-performing women who "made it" by suppressing. But facts are: 🧠 There are no consistent brain differences between men and women that explain men’s “logic” or women’s “emotions.” 💥 Hormones impact everyone. Men’s testosterone drops when they nurture. Women’s cortisol rises in toxic workplaces, not because they’re weak, but because they’re sane. 📉 What we call “meritocracy” is often a reward system for those who can perform like they have no body, no children, no cycles. None of those are biologically male traits. They’re artifacts of a system built around male lives. So, if you're a woman who's bought into this logic, here are some counter-strategies: 🛠 1. Study Systems Like You Studied Deals Dissect the incentives, norms, and bias loops of your workplace the same way you’d break down a P&L. Don’t internalize what’s structural. 🧭 2. Redefine Strategic Strengths Stop mirroring alpha aggression to prove you belong. Deep listening, self-regulation, and nuance reading, these are leadership assets, not soft skills. Use them ruthlessly. 💬 3. Name It, Don’t Numb It If your hormones impact you one day a month, say so, but also say what it doesn’t mean: It doesn’t cancel out 29 days of clarity, strategy, and execution. 🪩 4. Build Your Own Meritocracy Start investing in spaces, networks, and cultures where your wholeness isn’t penalized. If none exist, build them. 🧱 5. Deconstruct Before You Self-Doubt When you catch yourself thinking “maybe I’m not built for this,” pause. Ask: Whose rules am I trying to win by? Who benefits when I question myself? This post isn’t about defending women. We don’t need defending. It’s about calling out the internalised metrics we still use to measure ourselves. 👊 And choosing to rewrite them. What’s the most 'rational' reason you’ve heard for why women are a liability?

As a physician and advocate, I've seen the stark realities of healthcare inequality up close. It's a multifaceted challenge, deeply rooted in socioeconomic disparities, systemic barriers, and historical injustices. Yet, it's not insurmountable. We have the tools, the knowledge, and the collective will to forge a more equitable future in healthcare. The path forward involves a holistic approach: 1️⃣Embrace Preventative Care: Early intervention can prevent conditions from escalating into serious diseases. Community-based health education and accessible preventative services are key. 2️⃣Expand Telehealth: Telehealth can transcend geographic and transportation barriers, making healthcare accessible for all, but we must ensure it's equitably deployed. 3️⃣Diversify the Healthcare Workforce: A workforce that reflects the diversity of the population it serves can improve patient outcomes and trust. 4️⃣Advocate for Policy Change: Systemic change is essential. We need policies that ensure universal healthcare access and tackle the social determinants of health. Change won't happen overnight, but each step brings us closer to a healthcare system defined by its inclusivity and equity. Let's work together to make healthcare a right, not a privilege. #HealthcareEquity #SystemicChange #PreventativeCare #Telehealth #DiversityInMedicine #PolicyChange

A woman working 8 hours a day in corporate is paid in thousands on average, while a woman working almost 8 hours at home gets paid nothing. 👉Is managing a house not working?  👉Does work done at home require no skills?  👉Is raising children and managing the elderly not a full-time job? It definitely is. But that's considered a mandatory thing to do and not a work that women do at home. As per reports, on average, women in India spend 7.2 hours a day cooking, cleaning, and caring for their household members (children, elderly, sick or disabled). I totally understand that women are the wheels for tomorrow's existence, and apart from the economic aspect, women are the torchbearers of social growth. However, the disproportionate responsibility of unpaid care work on women results in gender inequality and time poverty, which impacts their ability to progress. Now, by being vocal about shared responsibilities at home and equal participation of women in economic, social, and political sectors, we are advancing towards a more equal society. But to achieve this in the truest form, we need to give due respect for the unpaid care work that women do at large. The World Economic Forum report released in 2023 estimates that at the current rate of change, the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity will take 131 years to close. That's a massive gap, and we need to speed up. 3 changes I believe need to be brought out are: 1️⃣ Normalize men taking on an equal share of household and childcare duties. We can start teaching these values right from our home to our boys. 2️⃣ About 82% of the total number of working women in India are employed in the informal sector. Measures like minimum wage coverage, maternity leave, health insurance, and old age pension schemes should be worked on. 3️⃣ Speak up when we see or hear gender stereotypes that reinforce women's role as primary caregivers and men as breadwinners. Whether it's cooking, cleaning, or childcare - every work is "real work". While the gender gap may seem daunting, change starts with each of us speaking up in our daily lives and taking action to get 1% closer to our goal of gender equality. What are some ways you think we can increase the value of unpaid care work? #womenempowerment #unpaidwork #genderequality

When Moms First was starting out, a lot of people asked me: Why moms? Why not all parents? This is why: https://lnkd.in/eh3gqwPm ------ "This month, the U.S. Census Bureau published a bombshell finding: The gender wage gap just got wider for the first time in two decades ‒ with women now earning just 83 cents to a man’s dollar. That’s maddening. But, for moms at least, it’s hardly surprising. It’s next to impossible to balance work and family in this country ‒ and as this new data shows, women are taking the hit. As the cost of child care continues to soar, women will just keep falling further behind. On paper, there’s no reason to believe that women should be earning less than men. Girls are more likely to graduate from high school and more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree. More women than men go to law school and medical school, and women’s enrollment in MBA programs has reached record highs. In fact, women do earn nearly as much as men ‒ at least early in their careers. On average, women in their late 20s and early 30s are much closer to parity, taking home at least 90 cents on the dollar compared with the guys sitting next to them at graduation or new hire orientation. Then, when women hit their mid-30s, something changes. The pay gap gets wider. It’s no coincidence that that’s precisely when women are most likely to be raising kids. All of a sudden, women are forced to make very hard choices to manage the demands of work and family. As the founder of Moms First, I’ve heard versions of this story from more women than I can count. Maybe mom drops down to part-time so she can make it to school pickup. Or maybe she switches to a new job that pays less but offers more flexible hours. Or maybe she drops out of the workforce entirely, because the cost of day care would have outpaced her salary anyway. Make no mistake, we are talking about moms here. When women are paid less than men anyway (and, in the case of Black and Hispanic women, way less), deprioritizing their careers can feel like the only logical decision, even if it isn’t what they wanted. This creates a vicious cycle, where pay inequity begets more pay inequity ‒ and women are systematically excluded from economic opportunities. At the same time, while women experience a motherhood penalty, men experience a fatherhood premium ‒ working more hours and reaping bigger rewards than those without kids. As Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin put it, when describing her pioneering research on the pay gap, 'Women often step back, and the men in their lives step forward.' Because here’s the thing: The 'choice' to step back from the workforce isn’t much of a choice at all. If grandma isn’t around to pitch in and child care costs more than rent, what other option do you have?"

Last week on LinkedIn, I saw a post from a man talking about how having a single-income household is a “luxury” these days. He ran the numbers: Two working parents. Childcare costs. Multiple cars. Therapy. And concluded that it makes more financial sense for one parent to stay home, claiming families could save around $4,000 a year. While he never explicitly said it should be the mother, the implication was clear. Here’s the problem with that math: it only looks at the short term, and it completely ignores the lifetime cost to the person staying home. When a woman leaves the workforce, she doesn’t just lose a paycheck for a few years. She loses: Hundreds of thousands of dollars in lifetime earnings Retirement contributions and compounding growth Social Security credits Access to benefits Long-term financial security and independence That $4,000 “savings” disappears instantly when you zoom out. Yes — childcare is incredibly expensive. Yes — the system is deeply broken. Yes — families should be able to afford care, pick up their kids from school, and build lives that don’t feel impossible. But women cannot keep being the ones who absorb the cost of a failed system. Over and over, we position women stepping back from their careers as a “smart financial decision” for the family, when in reality, it often places her in a financially risky position for decades to come. This framing asks women to bridge the gap between: a lack of systemic support, and the real demands of family life. And then calls that sacrifice “practical.” If we’re going to talk honestly about the cost of childcare and dual-income households, we have to include the full picture, not just what looks cheaper this year, but what it costs women over a lifetime. Because a decision that works short-term for the household is not automatically a good financial decision for her. #workingmom

Women are earning less today - and paying for it tomorrow. On 21 August, retired women in the UK effectively “ran out” of their pension income for the year - 4.5 months early compared to men. That’s a £7,600 shortfall, and a 36.5% gender pension gap - nearly three times the current gender pay gap. Let that sink in. The link between today’s pay and tomorrow’s pension is linear, and compounding. Lower salaries. Slower progression. Career breaks for caregiving. Fewer leadership roles. They all add up over time. This isn’t just about monthly payslips - it’s about long-term financial security. For women, closing the gender pay gap is also about retirement security and dignity. The TUC has called for: 🔹 Stronger rights to flexible working 🔹 Fairer parental leave and affordable childcare and social care 🔹 Pension reform to support low earners and unpaid carers 🔹 Better valuing unpaid caregiving by protecting the pension entitlements of those who step out of the workforce to provide care. I couldn’t agree more - these are critical building blocks. To this list I would also add: 🔹 Address the workplace barriers to women’s career progression: the double bind, the double burden, development gap, and discrimination. 🔹 Reframe flexible work as a career and productivity enabler, not a career killer This Equal Pay Day, let’s look beyond the surface of pay gaps - and start designing equity that lasts a lifetime. Read more below https://lnkd.in/encxTaqB And tell me, what is your organisation prioritising to close both the pay and pension gaps? #GenderPayGap #PensionGap #GenderEquity

Snapshot of gender equality across the SDGs. 🔎 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are intrinsically linked to gender equality beyond the explicit targets set by Goal 5. It is critical for governments and companies to adopt a gender lens in addressing the SDGs, recognizing that gender disparities intersect with broader developmental challenges. This approach is not only a matter of social justice but also an economic imperative, with clear evidence that gender equality can drive sustainable growth and benefit society as a whole. A data-centric review of the current status of gender equality within the framework of the SDGs reveals the following: ▪ Poverty: Predictions show that over 340 million women and girls will be in extreme poverty by 2030 if trends persist. To achieve the SDG's 'No Poverty' target, the pace of progress must be accelerated 26 times faster than the current rate. ▪ Hunger: Food insecurity threatens to affect one in four women and girls by 2030. Closing gender gaps in agrifood systems could potentially boost global GDP by $1 trillion. ▪ Health: Maternal mortality rates declined by a third globally between 2000 and 2020 but have not improved since 2015, indicating a need for focused health interventions. ▪ Economic Empowerment: An investment of an additional $360 billion per year is estimated to be necessary for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, which are vital for ending poverty and hunger. ▪ Education: Disparities persist in educational attainment, with 60% of girls versus 57% of boys completing upper secondary education, suggesting that parity in education has not yet translated into universality. ▪ Labor and Employment: The workforce participation gap is notable, with a significant disparity in earnings where women make 51 cents for every dollar that men earn. ▪ Political Representation: Despite progress, women are still underrepresented in political and managerial roles, which impacts decision-making processes and policy development. ▪ Urban Development: Without inclusive urban planning, it is estimated that 1.05 billion women and girls could be living in inadequate housing conditions by 2050. ▪ Climate Impact: Climate change is poised to disproportionately affect women and girls, with millions at risk of poverty and increased food insecurity. The data underscores the necessity for integrated strategies that address gender disparities as part of the broader sustainable development agenda. The advancement of gender equality is not only a standalone goal but also a catalyst for achieving all SDGs. Source: THE GENDER SNAPSHOT 2023 (UN) #sdgs #sdgs2030 #sustainability #sustainable #gender #genderequality #sustainabledevelopment #climatechange #genderequity

India’s Economy Has a Missing Engine: Women Especially women from lower-income backgrounds. A McKinsey study estimated that India could add $770 billion to GDP by 2025 by simply advancing gender parity in work. But instead, female labor force participation fell from 32% (2005) to ~20% (2020). https://lnkd.in/dvys4E6f Despite progress in some areas, female labor force participation in India is among the lowest in the world, even lower than some Sub-Saharan African countries. Why Are So Many Poor Women Underemployed or Not Properly Utilized? 1. Social and Cultural Barriers • Deep-rooted patriarchy restricts women’s mobility, especially in rural or conservative areas. • Girls are often seen as temporary earners, their “real role” is expected to be at home. 2. Safety and Mobility • Public transport is unsafe or unavailable, making it harder for women to travel to work. • Fear of harassment, especially in cities or during night shifts, keeps families from letting women work. 3. Unpaid Labor at Home • Women spend hours daily doing unpaid work: cooking, cleaning, child care, elder care. • This invisible labor is neither recognized nor redistributed. • Poor women, in particular, bear the double burden of poverty and gendered expectation. 4. Lack of Suitable Jobs - There is no structured pathway from informal to formal employment. 5. Policy & Structural Failure • Skill development programs often don’t reach women or are too generic and disconnected from market realities. • No large-scale, nationwide push for rural women entrepreneurship, decentralized production, or employment guarantees for women. • Schemes exist, but access is broken due to middlemen, corruption, or lack of information. Poor women: • Walk miles for water • Raise children with limited resources • Cook without clean fuel • Manage micro-budgets like CFOs of households Yet the system never sees them as ‘employable’ or ‘productive’. What Can Change This? 1. Localized employment: Bring dignified work to villages (e.g., food processing, crafts, decentralised manufacturing). 2. Safe, affordable transport: So women can commute without fear. 3. Women-led cooperatives and micro-enterprises: Let women own their work, not just participate. 4. Recognition of unpaid work: Design policies around time poverty, not just joblessness. 5. Mindset shift: From “allowing” women to work to realizing they hold the key to national growth. We talk of “demographic dividend” but leave half the population on the sidelines. A country that sidelines its women isn’t just unjust, it is chronically underperforming.

An insurance company told an oncologist that her cancer patient could no longer receive chemotherapy in the cancer center. The patient walked away from treatment entirely.   Banu Symington has practiced hematology-oncology in rural settings for more than 20 years. In May, the field was told three rollout vectors were coming. Within a week, two carriers acted. She appealed and was denied. Her finance manager offered to match the off-site price. The carrier refused to negotiate.   Three rollout vectors every healthcare leader should be tracking in their market right now:   1. Off-site infusion mandates. Chemotherapy is moved out of the hospital cancer center to an independent infusion suite, often staffed only by nurses, with no oncologist on the floor, no ER down the hall, no code team in the building. Infusion reactions can occur at any cycle.   2. White bagging. The carrier ships the drug directly to the hospital pharmacy with no margin retained. The line item that keeps rural cancer centers solvent disappears.   3. Brown bagging. The carrier ships cytotoxic drugs to the patient's home. The patient transports the medication to the infusion suite. Temperature control and chain of custody are no longer guaranteed.   The rollout is rural-first by design. Fewer physicians, fewer patients, less organized resistance. Once it scales rurally, the urban rollout follows. Medicare Advantage, administered by private insurance, is beginning to follow.   The economic mechanism is the part most leaders miss. Cancer centers do not break even on Medicare or Medicaid patients. The margin on privately insured patients subsidizes the operation. Strip that margin and the rural cancer center operates at a net loss and eventually closes. Access collapses by financial design, not by clinical decision.   Search "The Podcast by KevinMD" wherever you listen to podcasts.   If your organization has watched one of these three vectors land in the last year, what did the access cost look like for your patients?   #HealthcareLeadership #PatientAdvocacy #HealthcareReform #PhysicianAdvocacy #ThePodcastbyKevinMD